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Kyler Murray: Watching Murray, it's easy to see why he's rated so highly. He's highly athletic, with a cannon for an arm. You're talking about a guy who is only slightly slower than Lamar Jackson, with arm strength that will be in the elite rung of NFL quarterbacks. In a draft class with no seemingly "sure thing" QBs, Murray is the gamble who has the most tools on offer.

His biggest question mark isn't his height. It's decision making. Murray succeeded in college football on pure athleticism. It's not that he made bad decisions per se. Rather, it's that his athleticism kept him from having to make many hard decisions. When the athletic play was there, he took the athletic play. He didn't have to go deep into progressions, as both the system and his athletic talent provided opportunities to exploit. That he has only one year of starting experience means there's precious little tape of him making the kind of reads he'll need to make at the NFL level.

His second biggest question mark isn't his height either, but his overall bulk. Murray weight in at 207 at the Combine, but his playing weight at Oklahoma was more like 190, and some suggest it went down to 185. That's simply not enough mass to take the beating that an NFL quarterback will receive, even in this don't-touch-them era. Media types were fixated on his height measurement, but NFL types were more concerned about that weigh-in. Weighing 207 won't hurt Murray's athleticism one bit, but the question is if that's a number he can sustain.

Murray is a guy that has played on the stacked winning teams since high school. The deck has been shuffled in his favor, and playing teams that aren't inferior to his is going to be an adjustment for him. He's got great tools, but whether he has the skills to read defenses and the body to hold up in the NFL are big questions. I'd grade him a mid-1st.

Drew Lock: Drew Lock in a clean pocket looks like a top 10 selection. Drew Lock in an unclean pocket looks like a mid-round draft pick.

Lock is an extremely high variance player. He's a gunslinger and someone you can see tearing up defenses in the right situation. He's a guy who can make the challenging throws that only a few special arms can dare attempt. He can throw off-platform, from odd arm angles, meaning he physically can make throws from a poor pocket. But in those poor pockets, the decision making goes out the window. He trusts his arm and he's just gonna throw it.

Unlike the top two guys, Lock isn't a one-year starter, but he really didn't show the passing accuracy to play NFL ball until his senior year. It took him 4 years of starting to get to this point.

Lock helped himself at the Senior Bowl. He followed a good week of practices with being the best QB on the field in the game. He threw an underhand pass in the Senior Bowl because that's the kind of thing this dude would do. He's got an edge to him. There will be memes.

Lock gets compared to Jay Cutler a lot, but he often reminded me of another player: Brett Favre. Don't think about Brett Favre at his Hall of Fame career peak. Think of Brett Favre the 25-year-old quarterback who was driving Mike Holmgren and Steve Mariucci to early gray hairs. Lock isn't quite as freewheeling as Favre, but who ever will be? But he has that same kind of looseness on and off the field as Favre, not as tight at Cutler. He's going to win over the locker room of the team that drafts him.

That high variance worked out for Brett Favre, and it was so-so for Jay Cutler. There's a lot of ways Lock's career could go. He's my #2 QB, though, because he has potential that the rest of the list doesn't. He also has the highest potential of being the draft's Blake Bortles, so, there's that. Still, I'd grade him a late 1st.

Dwayne Haskins: Haskins is a smart QB, probably the QB in the draft whose grasp of the mental game is least in question. He has a quick, compact release that can distribute the ball around the field. Brett Kollman compared him to Jimmy Garoppolo, and that's a good comparison for how he plays: a lot of quick throws, feeding a lot of different receivers in the short and intermediate game.

He has little mobility to offer, regardless of Stephen A Smith calling him "more of a runner". In actuality, he had 108 rushing yards last year (1.4 per carry) and ran the 40 at a Leftwich-ian 5.04 seconds. In an era of increasing QB mobility, he is a traditional pocket-only passer.

Where Haskins raises question marks, besides his lacking mobility, is his ceiling. He has a very good chance of being Matt Stafford, someone that hangs around the middle point of NFL starting QBs. But his tools make it harder to see him going above that.

Like Murray, Haskins only has a year of tape to show, but at least his tape shows a lot more progression reads than Murray's. Still, his tape is full of screen passes and other college-level concepts that are less useful for NFL grading. When he did throw deep, it exposed the fact that his arm power isn't at an elite level.

Haskins is probably the guy most ready to step onto an NFL field and start. There's plenty of value in that. But there's a good chance he will be described at some point in his career as a "system QB". Putting him in a vertical passing offense would likely be a mistake. He's the same sort of QB as Nick Foles, who got that second-tier caliber QB contract this offseason from the Jags. That's where Haskins is most likely to peak. I grade him a 2nd rounder.

Will Grier: Grier is a prolific passer who lacks the arm power for serious 1st round consideration. This guy has New England Patriots written all over him. Both Brady and Garoppolo had arm strength as a knock against them on draft day, and they both physically improved in that area after joining the NFL, as well as got put into an offensive scheme that values quick delivery over making tight throws in holes. I will be so not shocked if Belichick tabs this guy as his next Garoppolo. The Chargers would be another great fit for Grier. Philip Rivers has average at best arm strength, and the offense is tailored to it.

The concern with Grier is that the offense has to fit what he can do, and there's concern that his ceiling could be Andy Dalton, another guy that's made a career out of playing around his limited arm talent, but who obviously is on a much lower tier than those other comparables (with the jury still being out on Jimmy G). I think he belongs as a late-2nd, early-3rd round pick.

Daniel Jones: Daniel Jones was coached at Duke by David Cutcliffe, who coached both Peyton and Eli Manning in college (QB coach for Peyton, head coach for Eli). You're going to hear that a lot come Jones' turn to get drafted.

He's not Peyton Manning, though. He's more like some combination of Eli and Alex Smith. Everything Jones does is... OK. He's entirely unremarkable as a prospect. He has the size you want for a QB, He's decently athletic. He has the throwing power for the NFL, if not anything that's going to challenge the upper tiers of the league. He's got enough mobility to move around and make a few plays on the ground. His decision making is... adequate.

The thing about being coached by Cutcliffe, though, is that you would expect to see more production from Jones than he managed. He was a career 59.9% passer, and only slightly above that as a senior (60.5%). His 6.4 yards per attempt were well below the Manning brothers. His numbers overall were only incrementally better than the previous QB in that offense, who later was an undrafted free agent. To be fair, though, the Duke receivers dropped an absurd number of catchable passes.

Jones is the QB most likely to be overdrafted. I don't think he belongs anywhere near the 1st round. He'd be a 3rd round grade for me.

Tyree Jackson: Jackson is one of my favorite what-if guys in this draft. If Will Grier could be Belichick's next Garoppolo, Jackson could be his next Jacoby Brissett: a guy with franchise QB-level physical gifts who really doesn't know how to play the position yet. Jackson has so many coachable flaws that need fixing, and I think a lot of NFL coaches would not be able to create the environment needed to do that much fixing, but Belichick and his staff does. They only had Brissett for one year before trading him away (which, by the way, was a terrible trade that should have earned more ire from Patriots fans, but the team's continued success - and Brady's lack of decline in 2017-2018 - papered over it). So we didn't get to see how far they could have taken Brissett with more time, but his stint as a starter in Indy showed how far they got him in one year. Tyree Jackson is both bigger and much more athletic than Brissett (he's 6'7", 250 pounds, and he ran a 4.59 40 - those are high draft pick tight end numbers). The odds aren't exactly stacked in Tyree Jackson's favor. I think he screwed up by entering the NFL draft instead of transferring and playing out his final year of NCAA eligibility at a bigger school as a grad student. He needed better QB coaching than he was getting at University of Buffalo, and a year at a top school could have brought him further along. As it is, he's extremely gifted but so rough right now that he's purely a long-term speculative investment.

He's definitely a late-round grade, but on a team that has the time to take on this project, he'd be super interesting.

* Nick Bosa is a carbon copy of his brother. From regular stats to advanced metrics to measureables, they are within the margin of error from each other. Watch their Ohio State tape and you need a timestamp to know which guy you're watching. They're more alike then Henrik and Daniel Sedin. They're more alike than Rick and Nick Bruiser. If Nick Bosa deviates in any meaningful way from Joey at the NFL level, it will be a shock.

I watched a highlights tape of Bosa, and the first play it showed didn't pre-snap spotlight which player Bosa was. But after two steps and just beginning to engage the offensive tackle, I knew immediately which guy it was. Turns out the play was his first sack in college football, tallied in his first ever game in college, as a true freshman. It was the kind of rep that would stand out on the senior tapes of any of the 1st round edge rushers, and it was in his freshman debut.

* The wide receiver position is an isle of misfit toys. There's a whole lot of flawed gems. Three guys that have my eye: AJ Brown, Deebo Samuel, and JJ Arcega-Whiteside.

* AJ Brown doesn't have the long speed to be a top draft pick, but he's a great talent that's likely to go low 1st or high 2nd round. Similar skill set as Juju Smith-Schuster but both heavier and faster.

* Deebo Samuel reminds me of another Jarvis Landry RB-body-at-slot-WR guy that catches and forces missed tackles to rack up YAC. Probably will end up around Round 3 due to lack of skill set for playing outside, buy likely to outperform his draft position

* JJ Arcega-Whiteside is a big, faster-than-expected receiver who caught more contested balls than anyone else in college football. In a draft of flankers and slot guys, he's one of the legitimate split ends. He's very Jordy Nelson, a guy who gets open by using his body rather than speed.

* Jonah Williams feels like a Joe Staley type of left tackle to me, and mocks have him going much later than he should. He's my top tackle. There's a few other good tackles. Jawaan Taylor is an immediate starting RT, big and strong and swallows people up, but not quite the technician you want on the left side. Dalton Risner is crazy strong and probably is a day 1 starting right tackle. Andre Dillard gas great lateral quickness and projects to a left tackle in a zone blocking scheme, but fits less well with a team that runs power.

* Rashan Gary is a physical talent that lacked production. But I think he was played out of position like the Niners have done with Solomon Thomas. Both guys belong inside at 3-technique instead of out on the edge.

* Gary's teammate Chase Winovich is interesting in that he performed very well as an edge rusher in college, but everyone thought his athleticism wasn't great for the NFL game. Then he went to the Combine and ran drills much faster than people expected.

* Montez Sweat has been evaluated like a top 15-20 player, but medical (heart condition) allegedly has him taken off of many draft boards.

To King and others..Damn man, let it go? Time will tell if the move was a good one or not. If not a good one, he's gone. If good, he will be praised.

You want people to move on already? Seriously? The draft was last weekend.

Edit: To be clear, we're still giving Legion sh*t for the Jags drafting Bork and that happened five years ago.

Bortles threw passes in the NFL. Jones hasn't even started rookie camp and some people are labelling him as a bust already. Not saying you are but all these draft and player wizards is just tiresome. Maybe I need to start ignoring it until Jones actually throws some passes and plays actual games.

Best guess is he's a great locker room guy and a bit of a coach on the field who will do anything you ask. Basically Josh McCown with better hair.

whispa wrote:

garion333 wrote:

whispa wrote:

To King and others..Damn man, let it go? Time will tell if the move was a good one or not. If not a good one, he's gone. If good, he will be praised.

You want people to move on already? Seriously? The draft was last weekend.

Edit: To be clear, we're still giving Legion sh*t for the Jags drafting Bork and that happened five years ago.

Bortles threw passes in the NFL. Jones hasn't even started rookie camp and some people are labelling him as a bust already. Not saying you are but all these draft and player wizards is just tiresome. Maybe I need to start ignoring it until Jones actually throws some passes and plays actual games.

The Bottles pick was laughed at at the time because it was largely thought by all those draft and player wizards to be a hilariously bad pick. Just like the Jones pick. I'm not a draft wizard at all, but a lot of football people I admit think it was completely and patently insane to take him there, and even Gettleman's stated reasoning is just plain nuts. I can't find a YouTube link to embed for Mina Lines and friends' reactions to this, but I'll just paste the Twitter link in.

It wasn't like Bortles or Jones weren't in the 1st round discussion, but they were picked way earlier than expected.

Gene Smith consistently screwed over the Jags organization by drafting players earlier than expected and I don't even have to mention the name Bryan Anger to make my point. He didn't bother trading down and taking the chance he might miss the guy he wanted, he just took the guy. It's an emotional decision, really, and he's happy he got the guy he wanted. Doesn't matter he could've gotten him 20 spots lower and picked up extra draft stock, he got his guy.

The smartest GMs make the calculated risks to move down and don't massively reach for players.

NSMike wrote:

How did I live before digital distribution of old, cheap games?

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

You did live before digital distribution of old, cheap games. Now you just play games.

What boggles my mind the most is that these kind of reaches are usually guys with some elite physical traits.

Say what you will about Bortles, but he had all of the Ben Roethlisberger "big QB" physical tools. His arm strength was never in question, he could take a beating without getting hurt, and running the ball is the only thing he did at a consistently high level, as far as QB running goes.

Jones has no real elite physical tools, they're just all kinda adequate across the board. Top shelf physical tools are your margin for error. You can be great without them, Drew Brees is. But the weaker your physical skill set is, the sharper and quicker you better be mentally.

Maybe Jones is on the cusp of developing into a stronger passer than he showed at Duke or the Senior Bowl. He'll get his chance to show it.

He does have some running ability, but you'd think Drew Lock would've been the QB out of all the QBs (other than Kyler Murray) who would've been over drafted but he went in the 2nd.

Heck, I expected someone to jump up for Haskins and he dropped to a reasonable spot.

There's just not that many teams that need QBs right now so when the draft class puts out a mediocre crop teams finally don't do stupid stuff and overdraft. Finally!

Except the Giants.

Even if you missed out on your QB, the Cards were desperate to unload Rosen. You could've taken a stud pass rusher and shipped off a much later pick for Rosen. I get it, damaged goods, and clearly Gettleman thinks it takes someone special to put up with NY's media and fans. But there had to be someone willing to come up a few spots for someone. Supposedly the Raiders' phone didn't ring when they were on the clock, so maybe not.

NSMike wrote:

How did I live before digital distribution of old, cheap games?

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

You did live before digital distribution of old, cheap games. Now you just play games.

I wish I had actually said it so that I could crow about being right later, but I had strongly suspected that there would be no trade market in the top 10. And that was almost true, with the surprise exception of Pittsburgh coming all the way up to #10 for Devin Bush.

But with Kyler Murray going #1, there was no other QB that was going to potentially stir any movement. The 49ers weren't going to let Bosa slide past #2, and they were going to require a monster deal to convince them to give up the pick. Guys like T.J. Hockenson and the two Devins (Bush especially) were top 10 guys because of a lack of blue chips at premium positions. And the one blue chip guy that did slide was Josh Allen, and with such a deep edge rusher class beneath him and Bosa, teams had too many better value alternatives to trading away huge chunks of draft capital to move up.

One thing that does surprise me is the Giants not extracting something out of the Jaguars to get them to swap pick #7 for #6. With them signing Foles, they would have been no threat to draft Jones. Josh Allen was on the board. I wonder if they tried. Maybe it was such a poorly kept secret that the Giants were going to take a QB there that the Jags didn't feel like they had to? Or they were just willing to live without Allen and take Hockenson.

Yeah I didn't like taking Jones so early either. I wanted Josh Allen...badly. I was hoping the Giants would get Rosen for a 2 or 3 which would allow them to get Allen and maybe a stud LB. If Gettleman and Shurmur have such a high praise for Jones and thought he wouldn't be there by 17, I get it, take the guy. I don't know what else they tried, ie moving up from 17 to 8 etc but this is where it's at. Jones had a horrible Oline and stale WR's and RB's. He made the most of his situation so I am willing to see that play out.

Hell, I didn't like the Saquon pick last year. Nothing against him but the position itself and fact that QB was the position i wanted, specifically Darnold. The RB position has such a short shell life that I am not a big fan for taking one so high. He ended up being a great player so far and exciting to watch.

If Jones doesn't pan out and the Giants continue to lose, Gettleman is gone and the Giants pay for it for years to come.

In something I read they tried trading for the 10th pick. I can think of a few different scenarios of what they'd do to get that pick, moving up or moving down, but can't recall when it was they were in talks.

It's not just Jones though, it's also taking a run stuffing DT with the 17th pick. It's the *one* position other than RB that the Giants had covered.

He redeemed himself with the CB pick (or so I read). So it's not *all* bad.

NSMike wrote:

How did I live before digital distribution of old, cheap games?

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

You did live before digital distribution of old, cheap games. Now you just play games.

So much of that reads like an abuser talking with his victim about all those good times where he wasn't abusive.

Tyreek didn't call her a bitch in text messages. Good job Tyreek. Just said it to her face in a threatening manner.

The kid "lights up" when he sees his dad. Yeah no sh*t, children are desperate for parental affection, abused children most of all. If that kind of statement is supposed to somehow prove Hill isn't abusive, it's extremely far off the mark.

And my god, those quoted text messages sound like someone speaking directly into a wire. "It was me. I am the guilty party. This statement is intended as an admission of guilt."

That entire letter is a sh*t-show. I doubt either party is innocent, so there's probably some truth in the mother being guilty of something. But it seems like the tactic here is to bob and weave around any specific instances getting pinned on Tyreek.

My wife and I have fought, yelling at each other and saying some pretty mean stuff. I don't remember a single argument or fight we have had in which we texted insults and arguing. The mean stuff is always face to face. so I don't think their texts necessarily represent their relationship, at all.

Will be interesting when neutral forensics starts going through the texts. I don't think they can get away with faking conversations like this. Something will trip them up.

Henry Standing Bear: It is a beautiful day at the Red Pony and continual soiree.

Castiel: I suggest we imbibe copious amounts of alcohol and just wait for the inevitable blast wave.

As someone who spent a whole lot of his childhood and teenage years at the local track, I've always thought the way replays are handled in racing is super dumb, not least of all because the people making the rulings are compromised in one way or another. They're all involved in the local track politics (and there's a ton of politicking -- the intertwining relationships between all the people at a track is worse than high school), and they're often still involved in the sport as owners or jockey agents or whatever. So their rulings are often nonsensical and inconsistent, and it's real easy to see that there might be some bias issues.

I've always thought that the best way to handle it would be to give 5 random spectators the chance to be stewards on a given day. They'd get to see the races from a unique vantage point, plus you'd pay them whatever a typical steward gets paid for a day. Have one person there who could explain to them the rule that was supposedly violated and let the randos vote on the outcome. I guarantee you'd see faster and better results.

Some of the NFL rules are probably too complicated for something similar to work. It might be fun though.

Not surprisingly, the Raiders draft of JaMarcus Russell ranks first. The Jags are in there twice, but neither is the Bortles draft. (The Jags-picked-a-punter draft came in at No. 5.)

Bonus: Daunte Culpepper factors into the second- and third-worst drafts on the list.

The Panthers 2016 draft (Vernon Butler) got an honorable mention. Can't say I disagree, as Carolina declined Butler's option for next year and seem inclined to cut him unless (and even if) he gets a lot better this season.

Not surprisingly, the Raiders draft of JaMarcus Russell ranks first. The Jags are in there twice, but neither is the Bortles draft. (The Jags-picked-a-punter draft came in at No. 5.)

Bonus: Daunte Culpepper factors into the second- and third-worst drafts on the list.

The Panthers 2016 draft (Vernon Butler) got an honorable mention. Can't say I disagree, as Carolina declined Butler's option for next year and seem inclined to cut him unless (and even if) he gets a lot better this season.

Derrick Harvey is such an odd one, because if a clone of him entered the draft next year, he'd still get drafted in the 1st round. It didn't help that the Jaguars jerked him around position-wise - the Jags experimented with a 3-4 and Harvey ended up playing 3-4 DE as well as OLB when his athletic profile is pretty clearly 4-3 end. That doesn't explain away his entire career of low productivity though. He just wasn't explosive enough, and probably didn't work hard enough because he didn't really endear himself to the coaching staff, it seems.

He still blew the doors off the DE that was drafted ahead of him though: Vernon Gholston.